as a freelancing comics-artist and soon went for comics on his own . However, when still a struggling freelancer, he was instructed by the publisher to adopt 'well accepted foreign comics' to make comics for their magazine(s) to get easy business. Introduction to comics The suggestion to work in comics in Bengali came from the editors at Dev Sahitya Kutir. Also the name 'Handa Bhonda' was their suggestion. Debnath had been familiar with foreign comics, but comics in Bengal, to his belief, had yet to take off. 'Shiyal Pandit', a comic strip created by Pratul Chandra Lahiri for the Jugantar newspaper was one of the earliest ones. Handa-Bhonda became an instant success and continues to be printed in Shuktara every month . Handa-Bhonda was initially penciled and inked by Debnath and had no coloured frames. Later it would be printed in the grey-scale. Narayan Debnath's first comic characters in color were for the comic strip and book 'Bantul The Great'. By Debnath's admission, he thought up the idea of the superhero while returning from College Street, Calcutta. The name came to him instantly and he thought up the figure of the protagonist rapidly. Batul the Great, written and illustrated with red and black ink made his first appearance in comic strips in the May–June (Bengali Baishak), 1965 issue of the monthly children's periodical called Shuktara, published by Dev Sahitya Kutir (henceforth DSK) publishing house. This character has similarities with Desperate Dan. Apart from Batul the Great, Debnath also illustrated Rabi Chobi (1961), written by Bimal Ghosh about the childhood days of Rabindranath Tagore. His Rajar Raja/Chobite Vivekananda (1962) recreates the life and times of Swami Vivekananda, while his Chitre Durgeshnandini (1962) re-imagines Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay's novel Durgeshnandini in graphic novel techniques. But it was his Handa Bhoda (1962), Nonte Phonte (1969) and Shootki ar Mootki (1964) that revolutionized the comic genre in Bengal through the familiar trope of the ‘terrible twins’ at boarding school. This trope could be traced back to the German artist Wilhelm Bosch's Max and Moritz (1865) – an illustrated story in verse, which later found its way into the English world as The Katzenjammer Kids (1897) of Rudolph Dirks and Harold H. Knerr. The trope is also found in Hergè's Quick and Flupke (1930). Development of the genre When the Bangladesh War of Liberation flared up, he was asked by the editors and publishers to add an